Osana, standing there with Amarande’s swords, one downturned and scraping the floorboards, the other straight through the giant’s back.
Impossibly, the big man got to his knees, then to his feet. Osana whistled and tossed the untainted sword to Amarande, who caught it as she stood, and then, using two hands, the girl pulled the other sword straight out of the man’s back before he made it to his full height.
Amarande got her sword up in a high guard, ready for the giant to turn and lurch at them. Osana followed, trying to copy, but clearly she’d never held a sword in her life until the moment she decided to thrust one into the ogre’s back.
But he did not lurch at them. Instead, he pressed a massive hand to where the blade had come out of his stomach, eyes flicking to the innkeeper, who was frozen behind the desk, his melty-soft features waxen.
“No good. No good,” the giant grunted, and then collapsed forward. He fell onto the marble desk, which buckled under the weight, and onto the innkeeper, too slow to move out of the way.
Amarande grabbed Osana’s hand then. They ran for the door, pausing only so Amarande could stamp out the knocked-down candle, which had, from its side, tipped melted wax onto the floorboards, its flame now a mere hairbreadth from lighting that runaway wax and setting the wood on fire. Then they sprinted out of the inn, across the portico, and into the sun. The horses waited, shifting on nervous hooves.
“Thank you,” the princess coughed out as they mounted theirhorses, swords out and ready for the innkeeper’s retaliation until they got their horses going into a hard gallop.
“You saved me, I save you,” Osana answered, though her face went pale as the giant’s blood dripped from the sword to her hand. She’d killed him; Amarande was sure of it.
The girls looked back as they wound around the edge of the wooden wall, waiting for the owner to come rushing out—or to perhaps send out more lackeys, because if he broke his own rules with one man, there were likely more.
But the innkeeper didn’t come, and he didn’t send anyone after them. He was a man who waited for prey rather than one who gave chase after it—a spider instead of a tiger.
Osana yelled to Amarande over the rushing wind, “You said four riders on three horses, yes?”
“Yes, so?”
“They’ve gone this way.”
“How do you know?” Amarande asked, sheathing her sword. Osana had nowhere to put hers and kept it out, the wind peeling blood off the Basilican steel.
“You aren’t the only one who can track.”
Headed due west, they raced for two more minutes, until the compound could be fully seen behind them, along with any possible retaliation. Amarande slowed Mira, and Osana slowed, too, pointing to a line that cut through the shifting sands. An indentation large enough to be a path.
And there they were, three pairs of horse tracks, and one person walking. All away from the compound, their path leading back to one of the doors in the wooden wall.
It wasn’t a perfect track, not really. More like an educated guess than something that could be corroborated.
Several yards away, the footsteps stopped and simply became three sets of hoofprints.
But then Amarande saw it—a small cluster of white flecks.
Amarande pulled Mira to a hard stop and dismounted to check, plucking a tiny beige grain from the scorched earth. Yes, a few oats, slipping through again.
Luca leaving clues. Which meant he was still alive and coherent.Thank the stars.
“What is it?” Osana asked.
“Proof.”
“Is it true what you said? That you left your kingdom because your stableboy was kidnapped to push your hand into marriage?”
Amarande nodded, her earlier concerns about what this girl knew assuaged by her very recent actions. “Yes. All of it.”
The girl chewed her lip. “I don’t know much about being a princess, but… can’t you just get another? That would be a good job for anyone.”
Amarande mounted Mira so that she could look the girl in the eye. “I can replace the stableboy, but I cannot replace what he means to me.”
Osana’s eyes widened. “But you’re a princess. You can’t… you wouldn’t…”
“Love a commoner? Of course I can, and I do. Love doesn’t know anything about class, nor should it be bound by it.”
